CO885(2-3) — Page 307

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.885

Reference :-

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rence of certain congregations, is sufficient to give the Bishop a legal identity and locus standi for the purposes indicated in the above questions.

But can the Church be required to rely in quiet upon such an argument as this, considering the inte rests at stake, the obstinacy with which ecclesiastical questions are raised and litigated, the tendency of Courts to weaken rather than set up the powers of these Letters-Patent, and, above all, the fact that the voluntary adherence on which it is proposed to rely was given on a misunderstanding as to the real legal position of the Bishop.

This is one question. But supposing it answered in favour of the Diocese, another question remains, What is to become of the Bishopric when the Bishop dies? His Letters-Patent prescribe no mode of determining the succession; voluntary consent has at present supplied none; and the Crown will hardly consent to go on appointing Bishops of Adelaide by Letters-Patent after it has been declared incapable of creating a Bishopric of Adelaide.

It would seem to follow that the Bishopric, viewed as a legal creation capable of receiving property and exercising trusts, must become extinct as soon as it becomes vacant.

Into these difficulties the Colonial churches are plunged, because a Court of Justice has pronounced that a mode of proceeding pursued during a long course of years by the Government of the country. under the authority of the great lawyers of the day,

and (I take leave to say) with the implicit sanction

of Parliament, is invalid.

It seems but reasonable that the State should

remove the difficulties which it has caused; and the

question is, how this is to be done.

I see only the following alternatives :---

1. To place the whole Colonial Church on the footing on which it has hitherto been supposed to be, with the power of subdivision and extension; prohibiting, or practically preventing, the growth of any voluntary episcopal system in contrast or rivalry with it.

2. To place the whole Colonial Church on this footing, without preventing the growth of a voluntary system.

3. To confirm actually existing dioceses in their reputed character of Crown dioceses, but to leave

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all future dioceses to be formed on the voluntary system.

4. To leave the Colonial Episcopate on the volun- tary basis on which the Judgment has now placed it, merely confirming existing Dioceses in their present rights of property, &c., so far as those rights would

have been given by voluntary consent.

For any of these proceedings an Act of Parliament would be necessary.

The first two proposals are open, I conceive, to conclusive objections.

Taken together, they present the alternative of either prohibiting a voluntary Episcopate, which would be tyrannical, or allowing it, which would tend to rivalry and schism. They would not establish a permanent uniform system, because Canada has already thrown off Crown appointments (the Synods appoint Bishops), and because the ecclesiastical constitution will not in any case, I assume, be made unalterable by the consent of Colonial Legislatures. And it may be pretty safely assumed that some Australian Dioceses would, before long, follow the example of Canada in applying for that consent. They will be illusory, since the restoration of legal jurisdiction is not to be thought of; yet, illusory as they are, they will be treated as an invasion of Colonial independence in Colonies having responsible government, and, in some cases, morbidly jealous of religious inequality. In fact, the mere creation of an Ecclesiastical Corporation in

the Colony without the advice of the Colonial Ministry is treated as such an invasion by the Government of New Zealand. Finally, it would have against it a strong and growing feeling among Colonial Churchmen.

For the fact is, that the existing system was getting intolerable before it broke down. That

a religious organization, which derived neither money nor jurisdiction from the Crown, should be placed at the mercy of the scruples and formalities- and, it might be, unfriendliness—of what is oppro- briously called "Downing Street," and in particular that those Colonists who support, and, in their fashion, submit, to the Anglican Bishop, should not have a voice in his appointment, was one of those anomalies which could not be maintained when once it began to gall; and it was certain to gall as the

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